Perhaps a few Nablers might be interested in amusing derailings from the academe, such as the one I'll be reporting now (soon after finding a lost and unexpected quote from "Lolita" in the recent "Batman x Superman" movie). 

In Disney's most recent retake of Mowgli* I encountered various charming scenes with one of the animals that V.Nabokov chose to provide him with a pet name for Véra in his letters (in English, "my dipod") **.  I wonder if V. Nabokov"s inspiration was less motivated by his familiarity with the animal world than by literature, namely, by Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book. Disney's reference might have been true to the letter but I read Kipling only in my youth and I no longer have the energy to check this detail any further.   

*The Jungle Book is Disney's 2016 Live-Action Adaptation and remake of their animated adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's original story, directed by Jon Favreau, and following the recent success of Disney's live action remakes. It is the second live action adaptation of The Jungle Book made by Disney. The Jungle Book contains examples of: [snip ] Misplaced Wildlife: King Louie was changed from an orangutan to a Gigantopithecus in this movie in order to avert this trope, as while orangutans aren't native to India, fossil findings show that Gigantopithecus was [snip] Seldom Seen Species: King Louie's monkey underlings include some relatively obscure species, such as gibbons and Lion-tailed_macaque. And of course, Louie himself is a Gigantopithecus. Quite a few other obscure species make cameos, including jerboas, hoopoes, and a pangolin.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheJungleBook2016

**- Details about "dipods - jerboa mouse" were included in a past VN-L posting.

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